S. Korea Urges China on Asylum Seekers

Published 2:14 pm, Monday, April 25, 2016

South Korea urged China on Wednesday not to repatriate dozens of North Korean refugees arrested last week, and offered to accept them if they are sent to South Korea, officials said.

Shin Jung-seung, director of Asia-Pacific affairs at the South Korean Foreign Ministry, made the offer when he met the Chinese charge d'affaires Gwan Huabing in Seoul, said Kim Hyon-ju, a ministry spokesman.

Chinese police arrested 48 North Koreans in mid-January, shortly before they were to be secretly ferried out of China and taken to South Korea and Japan, said international aid workers in Seoul and Tokyo.

The spokesman said Shin told the Chinese diplomat that South Korea hoped the case would be "dealt with humanely."

A treaty between Beijing and North Korea requires China to send back any illegal escapees _ but it hasn't always done so in cases that have become public.

Last year, 1,141 North Koreans defected to South Korea, most of them through China. The number was a sharp increase from the 583 in 2001, up from the 312 in 2000 and 148 in 1999.

The defectors complain about hunger and repression in their impoverished homeland. Since 1995, North Korea has depended on outside aid to feed its 22 million people.

The Koreas were divided in 1945, and their border remains tightly sealed.